Cooksville is a fairly large community in the former Toronto Township in Peel County in south-central Ontario, Canada. Since 1968 Cooksville has been located in the municipality of the City of Mississauga.

Cooksville is a neighbourhood at the intersection of Dundas Street and Hurontario Street.

The entrepreneur won the contract to deliver the mail from York to Niagara, operated several stage coach lines, was the local magistrate and built the Cooksville House, the first licensed tavern in the area at the northwest corner of Dundas and Hurontario streets in 1829.

Cooksville grew in size and influence until the Great Fire of 1852 razed much of it.
A tornado hit the area on June 24, 1923 destroying mostly rural farmhouses around the town.
There was a 182 acre brickyard that sprawled south of the CP rail line from 1912 until its closure in 1995, employing many Cooksville residents over that period. The Italian Heavyweight champion boxer, Primo Carnera had worked at the yard for a short period during his youth. Today, the converted site is a medium density residential and retail zone along Shorline Dr., not far from the infamous 1979 Mississauga train derailment site at the CP crossing (Mavis & Dundas St. W.).

Much of the growth that occurred in Mississauga in the 1960s before amalgamation was based around Cooksville. It is home to highest concentration of high-rise condominium and rental buildings in Mississauga, mostly on or close to Hurontario Street just south of the City Centre; many are home for newer immigrants to Canada. The area is also the main transportation hub in Mississauga, with GO Transit rail and bus service and express city buses to Toronto Union Station. The Mississauga Transit and GO Bus Terminal is adjacent to the north parking lot of the Square One Shopping Centre.

The population of the area is highly diverse with people from originating from all over the world, over half are visible minorities. There is a plethora of South Asian and Arab textile/clothing shops, restaurants and grocery stores in the area. There is also a significant number of Afro-Caribbean take-out restaurants and barber shops; the area is known to cater towards Mississauga's black community because of the large number of barber shops in close proximity to one another. Nevertheless, the area is multicultural and most cultures are represented in the area.

Research Tips

The primary source for basic documents (vital statistics, land records, wills) for people who lived in the Province of Ontario is the Archives of Ontario, 134 Ian Macdonald Blvd, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M7A 2C5.

Early Records

Civil registration did not begin in the province until 1869. Before then there may be church records of baptisms and burials. For the most part these are still held by the denomination who recorded them. Copies of marriage records made pre-1869 had to be sent by individual clergymen to the registrar of the county in which the marriage took place. These marriage records are available through Ontario Archives, on micorfilm through LDS libraries, and on paid and unpaid websites, but because they were copied at the registrars' offices, they cannot be considered a primary source.

Vital Records after 1869

Birth, marriage and death registrations are not open to the public until a specific number of years after the event occurred. Births to 1915 are now available [October 2014]; dates for marriages and deaths are later. Birth and death registration was not universally carried out in the early years after its adoption. Deaths were more apt to be reported than births for several years. The more rural the area, the less likely it would be that these happenings were reported to the authorities.
Images and indexes of civil registrations for the "viewable" years can be found on paid websites, and indexes only on FamilySearch. The FamilySearch Wiki on Ontario Vital Records explains how these records are organized and their availability.
In September 2014 Ancestry.ca announced that its paid website has been subjected to a "houseclean" of its Ontario BMD database, adding data that had been omitted and making many corrections. Its provision now includes

Births, with 2,172,124 records covering 1869-1913.

Marriages, with 3,393,369 records for 1801-1928 including Ontario county, district and Roman Catholic origins as well as province-wide civil registration.

Censuses

The original censuses are in the hands of Library and Archives Canada, known to Canadians as "LAC". Copies of original microfilms are online at the LAC website for all censuses up to 1911. Each census database is preceded with an explanation of the geographical area covered, the amount of material retained (some census division material has been lost), the questions on the census form, and whether there is a name index. Census divisions were redrawn as the population increased and more land was inhabited. The 1921 census is only available through Ancestry.ca, but it is free-to-view. Other websites, some paid and some free, also provide Canadian census originals and/or indexes online. One can also view censuses on microfilm at the LAC, at the Archives of Ontario (see address above), or at large libraries throughout Canada.